Sophia Holmes and the Geek Interpreter
by Dralice99
Summary: Book 6 When three uni boys come to Baker Street with tales of their graphic novel heros coming to life, the trio don't know what to expect. Do the KRATIDES actually exist or are the boys suffering from some type of psychological trauma? Or is someone trying to get Sherlock and Sophie's attention?
1. Chapter 1 (04-01 14:42:10)

I don't know how Mrs Hudson is going to respond when we arrive back at Baker Street. She's been left almost completely in the dark throughout this week, and doesn't know that I've been in hospital for the majority of it, a gaping big hole in my shoulder. I'm sure I'll soon find out.

John helps me out of the cab, and I wince slightly as my shoulder brushes against his coat. Dad leads us towards the flat, wheeling all three of our suitcases behind him and still managing to open the front door.

Despite my protests that the bullet had affected my arm movement, not leg movement, dad leaves the cases at the bottom of the stairs and carries me up instead. I'm honestly feeling so pathetic at the moment. John opens the living room door for us and clears the sofa of the scattered newspapers and clippings from our previous case which had fallen down when we were away, and dad lies me down.

"John, you get the cases, I'll go see if Mrs Hudson has any morphine."

"Why would she - ?" John starts, but dad wonders out of the room, so he turns to me instead. "Stay there, you need to rest." I let my head fall back down onto the arm rest in defeat.

It's not as though I rested for a week in the hospital, or for the cab back. John seems to think that the wound has been infected, or something, and that's why they're being gentle. I guess he's also had experience of this himself and doesn't want the same happening to me. As if. I am Sophia Holmes, and I will not allow myself to be defeated by a bullet.


	2. Chapter 2

A little while later, we're all gathered in the living room, waiting for the expected clients to show up. John's sat up to the table, his laptop already on as he types up our cases, while I'm lying on the sofa. Apparently Mrs Hudson is all out of morphine. Fat lot of good she is.

"What are you typing?" dad asks as he lifts a mug of tea up. Beside me is a steaming mug of hot chocolate which is slowly turning cold, but I can't reach it from my position.

"Blog," John replies.

"About?"

"Us."

"You mean me," dad corrects.

"Why?" John questions, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, you're typing a lot." A smile curves onto my face as the doorbell rings, and John stops typing for a moment, unsure how to take dad's last response.

"Right then," he says, walking towards the door."So, what have we got?" As he walks out, John steps away from his laptop and helps me to sit up before retreating back to his seat as dad comes up with our first potential client. Dad pulls a chair from the dining chair and flips it around so it's facing the fireplace, and gestures for him to sit down.

"My wife seems to be spending a very long time at the office," the man in the trench coat says as he makes himself comfortable.

"Boring," dad and I say in unison before he stands up and shows the man the door. Soon enough, though, he's bringing another clientup the stairs, a woman this time. She sits down in the seat, and puts her hands on her thighs before speaking.

"I think my husband might be having an affair," she says, almost crying, and I can see the faded bite marks on her neck from where previous ... actions have been let to heal, therefore suggesting that she is indeed the victim of an affair.

"Yes," dad confirms, before gesturing her out as well. She looks startled, but follows him out towards the door.

Next, a guy which I can only describe to you as creepy shows up, holding a funeral urn of all things!

"She's not my real aunt," he protests. "She's been replaced – I know she has. I know human ash." I see the clear signs that he's been working with the machines in a crematorium from the ash beneath his fingernails and slightly dust-stained palms. On the whole, though, it's fairly uninteresting.

"Leave," dad tells him, and soon he and his urn are replaced by a business man and hid two lackeys which stand behind him as he sits down

"We are prepared to offer any sum of money you care to mention for the recovery of these files." I roll my eyes in annoyance.

"Try looking in the recycling bin," I suggest, sighing, and the men turn around to face me. "Bye!" Confused, the men leave.

We're then left alone for a while. So many useless cases. We've been gone for a week and already crime in London is dying out? After lunch, which consists primarily of my second hot chocolate, we're greeted by a final ring of the doorbell.

Dad leads up three young men - uni boys I would say, IT courses - into the room. They must be one or two years older than me, but they still have their school-boy hairstyles and acne to match. As the typical stereotype would suggest, they're all dressed in baggy t-shirts and ripped blue jeans. They walk into the living room awkwardly, and then one sits down on the chair as his two geeky friends stand behind him, as the business man's lackeys had done before them.

"Anytime you want to start," John says, his fingers ready to type up notes, and dad stands to one side, ready to show them the door.

"We have this website," he begins, and I roll my eyes, already uninterested. "It explains the true meaning of comic books, 'cause people miss a lot of the themes." Couldn't they do that on Tumblr? I happen to be on Tumblr: it's only a recent thing that's come into apparition but I started it up while I was bored. Sophiaholmes221b - it's a lot easier to use than our website. Dad starts to walk away, bored. "But then all the comic books started coming true," he says desperately. I frown, but then it turns into a smile.

"Oh. Interesting," dad says, walking back to his seat and sits down. "Tell me more."


	3. Chapter 3

"Um, okay, so my name's Chris Melas and this is -"

"Yes, not interested, moving on," dad interrupted.

"Okay," Chris replied rubbing his thighs anxiously before looking back at his friends for help.

"Don't be boring," I groan, seeing the signs.

"No," he says, shaking his head, "alright. One of the main features of our website is a graphic novel based on an organisation called the KRATIDES - they're like this group of really cool guys which help fight terrorism, but actually they're not freedom fighters, they're right-wing believers."

"Comic book heroes which are right-wing believers?" John repeats.

"They aren't 'comic book heroes'," Chris sighs. "They're graphic novel heroes."

"Right, yeah," John says, hiding a smirk. "So these right-wing graphic novel heroes - you've seen them ... where exactly?"

"They've been in different places each time we see them, and there doesn't seem to be a pattern that we can see." I laugh slightly and their heads turn around to face me.

"Sorry, continue," I smile, biting my lip. It's very unlikely that they could have looked into it enough for any patterns to be uncovered.

"Um, okay, so we - I've - seen three of them, so far. I spotted the first at New Cross Station as I was coming back from uni. It was - looked like, I mean - Sophy, the Wolflady. She was getting rid of some unattended luggage as if it contained a bomb or something." John begins to scribble down some notes in his book, but dad and I lean forward, eager to hear more. "Then, I saw The Flying Bludgeon on Wandsworth Common fighting a guy who had started mugging a woman. Then ..." he says, pulling out his wallet and sliding a small paper photograph from it, "I saw the leader of the KRATIDES, Professor Davenport, outside the Greggs in Beckenham." He passed the photo across to dad. "What do you think, Mr Holmes?" Dad looked down at the photo for a moment, analysing the figure.

"Interesting," dad says, walking behind them to give it to me to look at. Sure enough, I can see the blue-skinned leader standing in the middle of the street, watching people go by. "Sophie?"

"It wouldn't have taken much to take a photo of Greggs and then photoshop Davenport into it," I say thoughtfully.

"But in the novels, he's in cartoon form," one of Melas' mates argues. "How -"

"There are a million and one tools on photoshop which can change the properties of the photo," I tell him lazily. "I'm sure it won't take me long at all to find the one which turns the cartoon into a real-life figure."

"Mr Holmes," Melas says, dismissing my argument. "I should probably tell you that these things which I've seen happening - well, they've happened in the novels as well."

"What do you mean?" Dad asks, frowning.

"Well, Sophy with that luggage, she did that in the third book, and The Flying Bludgeon is supposed to be fighting off a mugger in the forth book." I look over to dad, a little confused.

"Could it be some other students, playing a prank?" John asks dad, his pen poised above his page. "You know, dressing up as these characters and trying to convince people that they're real."

"Possible," dad hums. "But in my opinion, there are three possibilities." He takes the photo back off of me and walks across the room before sitting down in his seat.

"What are they?" Chris asks eagerly.

"Number one," he says, putting his fingers together. "The KRATIDES exist in real life and the 'graphic novels' are just ways of publicising their actions. I once knew a -"

"And secondly?" I question, interrupting him going into a long lecture about a previous case.

"Secondly," dad says, fortunately stopping. "You are suffering from psychological delusions, which is quite likely considering the pressure you would be under at university."

"I'm not imagining these things!" Chris cries. "I saw these people."

"And lastly," dad says, frowning in thought as he ignores Melas. "This whole thing could be set up for me."

"Moriarty," I whisper. He'd been gone for almost a month now, and nothing had led back to him. Dad nods in return.

"Mr Holmes," Chris says, looking furious. "My family and friends think I'm crazy. There are only four people who believe I'm still sane."

"Interesting," I say. "You said four. Now, assuming for the moment that you were including yourself and these guys here, there is still someone you're missing. Where is he?"

"We've never actually met him," says one of his friends, "but he's on our website."

"Pass me the laptop," I say, and John carries on over for me. He fortunately didn't turn it off, so I open up another tab. "What's the name of your website?"

"Behind the Novels," Chris pipes up, apparently beginning to calm down. "But you won't find anything. He doesn't even have a profile picture." As the page opens, I click on the 'comments' section and see the conversations between them.

"That would be Kemp, yes?" I ask him, and he nods. I spin the laptop around briefly to show dad. "Profile picture is a smiley face - oh I hate those. So you have no idea what he looks like?" The boys shake their head. I read the comments between them. One that catches my eye is a response given after Chris first tells his followers what he's seen. And guess who's replied first?

:-) Kemp: It's alright mate, I believe you. It's incredible, I wish I could have seen it myself - keep spreading the word! Let the world know that these guys exist and what they've done. We need to see more of them. This is fantasic!

"And have you?" I ask, looking up from the screen. Melas looks at me confused, and I roll my eyes and sigh in annoyance. "Been spreading the word?"

"Oh, sorry, yeah," he says. "I've set up accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Google - you name it, I've been posting it on pretty much every social networking site I can find."

"And you've been facing a fair amount of ridicule for your troubles," I state, flicking quickly through the facebook account Chris mentioned.

"Well, yes," he admits.

"Thank you Mr Melas," dad says, standing up and walking towards the door. "We should be in contact with the answer within the next couple of days."

"You really think you can solve it so quickly?" Melas asks.

"Well, yes." Dad replies. "I am Sherlock Holmes, after all."


	4. Chapter 4

We spend the next hours researching the KRATIDES, and three hours in, I feel that I'm more knowlegable about these heros than any of Chris's mates were. As it generally happens when dad is forced to fill up his mind palace with unneccessary trivia such as this, he soon becomes irritable, unable to stay in his seat for more than five minutes before getting up and pacing. I'm gritting my teeth and baring it, putting all the information I gather in the 'Short Term' section of my mind palace, which is actually a large wheely bin just outside the door. Some of it's interesting, however, such as the fact that the company which writes theKRATIDES is a fairly new group, having only set up shop two years ago. That would be too new to have three books out already and a forth on its way.

"I'm going to the comic shop," I burst, looking up from my screen. Dad doesn't look over, but John pops his head up from behind his own laptop.

"Alright, do you want me to come with you?" he asks, frowning in concern as I pull myself painfully onto my feet.

"You wouldn't know what to look for," I say. "You'd only slow the process down." He looks startled for a second before I realise that what I said may have offended him. I give him my attempt at an apologetic look setting off.

As I approach the shop, I brush my hair back into a tight and small bun with a wince as I pull against the bullet wound, but then slip on a pair of thickly rimmed glasses. The bell which hangs behind the door tinkles melodically as I push it open, a fair collection of white paint flaking off in my hand. The man behind the desk is an overweight drunk with suspected heart disease, and he looks like he's only just left school. I have to shoot the shirt which is pulled tight over his stomach a second glance, however, as I see the figure of a Weeping Angel, the monster we encountered with the Doctor several weeks ago, painted on his shirt, the slogan 'The Angels are Coming' written in white above it.

I walk over to him just as he draws the beer can away from his mouth, and rest my hands patiently on the counter. As he sees me, I can hear the liquid inside the can slosh around the sides as he jumps, the beer almost leaping out if the shop assistant hadn't have drunken so much.

"What do you want?" he asks me, wiping away the foam from his black moustache.

"I was just wondering where you kept your store of KRATIDES comics," I tell him, tapping my fingers on the counter. "I've just started reading them, I wonder if you can tell me anything about them."

"The KRATIDES novels?" he repeats, correcting me, and with a strained smile, I nod. "Yeah, those are the ones which have gained a lot of publicity lately. Have you seen the website a couple of lads set up a while back? One of them reckons they're real. A complete loonie, if you ask me, but it's good for sales."

"What, they've gone up?" I confirm, heading over to the direction he points and start flicking through a few of the books.

"Through the roof," he says. "Tell me if you need anything else." The shop attendant turns and heads back to his desk to help someone else who's just come through the door. I frown slightly at her appearance. She wears an old brown coat and a few fleeces layered over each other and the smell ... well, we won't go there. She's most certainly homeless, and the fact that she's here now seems to suggest that she's here for me - she clearly isn't here to buy comics, despite what she's saying to assistant. Eventually, she moves over to me, and I busy myself inside one of the books, but keeping a bespectacled eye on her.

"An Apple iPhone is more reliable than a Samsung." My head flips around to face her, my mouth falling open. Only one person ever greeted me like that, and she's dead.

"The data stored on a Samsung is more secure than one on an Apple device and it is also harder to hack," I say seriously before dropping my voice. "Where the hell have you been? I've covered half of London looking for you. If you needed to hide, we could have offered you a place in Baker Street."

"You should have looked in the other half," she laughs softly. "And you know how I feel about your dad."

"Fair point," I shrug. "So what brings you back."

"That father of yours wants you back home. He gave me cash for us to take a cab," she tells me, putting a filthy hand back inside her coat to feel at the fifty note that dad must have given her. "We have to pick some stuff up first though. He hasn't told me much, but I think he wants us to track some guy called Kemp. Do you know of him?"

"He's part of a case we're working on at the moment," I tell her, knowing that I can't be saying much more than dad has already told her, or that she's figured out since then. "Honestly, though, he's getting as bad as Mycroft," I curse in disbelief. How long has he known that one of my best friends is alive? "Alright. Let's go."


	5. Chapter 5 (04-01 14:44:13)

We take a quick ride over to one of Ceri's contacts to pick up some of the relevant tracking devices, and then we take the cab back to Baker Street.

Dad has several computers set up for us when we arrive, and Ceri takes one of the older ones as I take my own. Similar to the apple and samsung argument, it is commonly known among hackers that an older laptop is better because most of the modern tracking devices don't pick up an older computer's signal. That's why it's hard to track a hacker, because we know this stuff.

By the time the software has loaded onto our seperate laptops, it's well into the night. John stays behind us, trying to watch the endless lines of code we're both writing in order to find Kemp, but I can sense that he's finding it hard to stay awake. Dad's only a little more observant, watching intently as my fingers fly easily across the keys. He told me the other day that we are distantly related to the great Alan Turing, practically the greatest cryptographer this world has ever seen. He was a genius, and I'm proud to carry on in his footsteps. Unfortunately, dad didn't inherit the 'Computer Genius' gene, so I've had to learn everything from Ceri.

"Ah!" Ceri cries several hours later, and a few moments after, I achieve the same as her. I lift my fingers from the keyboard and shake them out, and I feel them loosen up once more.

"Have you got it?" dad demands, coming back over from his position beside the fire.

"It's closing in on his address," I tell dad. "Or, at least, the address his computer is kept at." As the maps stopped zooming in, I double clicked on the address, and then turned to Ceri to double check she had the same.

"Of course!" dad cries as he sees the address. "Elementary."

"The KRATIDES publishing company?" John repeats the next morning after we've finished telling him what happened, seeing as he eventually fell asleep. "The little - "

"He's been using Chris and his website as a form of advertising," I explain. "The whole 'tell everyone' trick. I should have seen this coming. And it certainly seemed to work."

"They've driven a man half out of his mind!" John cried. "Just to put some extra cash in their pocket."

"A neat idea, don't you agree?" dad smiles. "Technically, he hasn't done anything illegal, so there's nothing Lestrade can do about it."

"Nothing he can do, no," I reply. "But I have an idea on what we can do."


	6. Chapter 6

Chris comes to collect our final opinion on the matter in the afternoon. This time, he's without his mates, and comes up the stairs slowly, nervous of what our verdict will be. We're ready and waiting for him, a collection of KRATIDES novels spread out on thetable for Chris to look at and for us to discuss our next moves. We get straight down to business.

"Mr Melas," dad says, and I wince slightly as I thrust a chair out for him to sit down on. The painkillers John had been feeding me had been working up until now, due to the over usage of it last night, so now the slightest movement is uncomfortable. "Your case was an interesting one, but in the end it was so simple that even you should have noticed something."

"Sherlock," John mutters. "Perhaps less of the insults." I hear dad sigh in exasperation before he continues on as before.

"We tracked down -" I cough pointedly and dad rolls his eyes. "Sophie tracked down your friend 'Kemp', and can you guess what we found?" Chris shakes his head, and obviously dad's tone is beginning to intimidate him.

"Kemp works for the publishing company of the KRATIDES novels," I tell him. "We're guessing marketing judging on his motive." Already, Chris has his head in his hands, guessing what I'm going to say next. "You were being used as a form of, rather sucessful, interactive advertising for his company. He would stage certain events with a group of students which would be paid cheaply in order for you to broadcast what you've seen."

"I trusted him!" Chris cries, and I can't help but feel a twinge of sympathy. "I thought he believed me, I thought ..." he shook his head. "I don't know what I thought. I guess I was just so eager for my favourite characters to be real. Mr Holmes is right - the signs were all there, I was just too caught up in my own fantasy to see them." He looks up at us, tears of fury trickling a path down from his eyes. "What's going to happen now?"

"Chris, you must understand that technically, er, 'Kemp' hasn't done anything illegal, so he won't be charged for this," John tells him gently. Chris shakes his head. He knows.

"But what we were thinking was that we could take a leaf out of 'Kemp''s book and play a little trick on him," I tell him, smiling slightly at the thought. "One that could potentially throw the KRATIDES novels from the 'famous' pile to the 'infamous' pile. But we're going to need your help." He looks at us again, confusion written clearly across his face.

"My help?" he questions. "How ...?"

"We're going to need your expertise on the KRATIDES for us to stage our own little fight," dad tells him. "Tell us what has already been covered, what would come next if it was to occur in chronological order." Chris stands up to look at the comics.

"Wait!" he says, pausingand looking around at us in excitement as he points at one of the comics. "This one isn't even out yet. How...?"

"We acquired it," I tell him nochalantly. "I think the KRATIDES company owed us at least this." He flicks thorugh the book quickly, his eyes flitting between the pictures before he stops suddenly.

"Here," he says, slamming a finger down. I lift myself up and dad follows me over to look at what he's pointing at. Well this should be fun.

"Terrorists take Shaftesbury," I read. "Nice and original." Chris looks at me, clearly offended.

"This is a masterpiece!" he exclaims.

"Yeah, if you say so," dad backs me up. By this time, John has joined us as well.

"Are you sure there's no other ones you want to do?" he asks, looking at the picture with his eyebrows raised. The picture depicts one of the so called 'superheroes' fighting three masked terrorists on Shaftesbury Avenue.

"No," I have to stop myself from laughing. "This one should be fine."

"We're going to have to make it look authentic, though," dad says. "We're going to have to learn a routine."

"Sorry?"

"The fight we're staging will need coordination," dad explains, a hint of annoyance in his voice. "One wrong move and it could give the game away early."


	7. Chapter 7

The next day, we decide Chris is ready to stage the fight, so dad delves into his wardrobe to look for a disguise which will pass us off as terrorists. After the case of the Blind Banker, dad and I stole some of their ninja costumes, so we use them and by the time I've finished pinning them into place, the robes look fairly convincing.

We organise to meet Chris in Soho at around midday, where we plan on causing some general trouble before he'll run in on us.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" John asks. This morning, I thought he looked excited, now sense has taken over and he's realising how ridiculous this idea is.

"We're almost there now," dad says, ignoring him.

"No, Sherlock -"

"It'll be fine," I reassure him. "We won't be there for too long, and our faces are covered - there's no way anyone will recognise us." Except from our rather distinctive heights, of course.

As we reach the agreed area, we leap into action, pulling over crates of fruit from outside one of the shops and tipping over tables. As an added bonus, our actions are in the blind spot of the nearby security cameras - I made sure of that before we got here. There are shouts and screams from the surrounding area, and many threats are thrown of calling the police. But we continue until we see the rather disturbing sight of Chris Melas in his tight blue lycra Latimer costume and as he sees us, he launches into action. I'm the first one to take Latimer on. One, two. Two punches thrown at his chest which he grabs and holds tight, swinging me around so that my arms are held, rather awkwardly, behind my back until he shoves me over. This is my cue to leave, so, nodding at dad and John that the first scene has gone painlessly, I sprint away from the fight and around the corner, splitting the watching crowd.

From my position in the alley, I watch as dad and John perform their rehearsed moves, which include John launching himself onto Latimer's back as he tackles with dad on the ground. At last, they exchange glances and follow my path off to the alleyway. Chris stays behind and as we ease our masks off from the shadows. Melas does the same in front of his audience.

"I am not a superhero," he begins, his voice shaking slightly as he speaks to his audience. "And the KRATIDES do not exist. For the last fewmonths, I have been influenced to believe that I was going insane - that I was seeing things that no one else could. It destroyed my life. I have a few people to thank for helping me discover that I was being used as advertisment for the publishers of the KRATIDES graphic novels. They have helped me get my life back, and I owe them so much for doing so. I'm so sorry for any disturbance our performance may have caused today. Thank you." He bows out, and then sprints off in the other direction, leaving a stunned silence behind him, followed by an applause.


	8. Chapter 8

When I get up the next day, I see John is already awake and in the living room, typing up our case. Dad comes up behind me as I move over towards the sofa, and he looks at the screen.

"'Geek Interpreter,'" dad reads aloud. "What's that?"

"It's the title," John replies shortly.

"What does it need a title for?" He questions, and I look up to see John smile tightly.

"Um, John," I say, quickly slipping an arm out of my shirt leaving my shoulder exposed. "My stitching, it's opened up."

"Oh shit," he says, slamming his laptop shut and coming over to look. Dad follows him over to watch as John inspects it.

"Must have been the strain from yesterday's fight," dad tells me, and I roll my eyes.

"No shit Sherlock," I reply through a clenched jaw as John pokes around at it.

"Oi, language," John says sternly and I grimace slightly.

"Well, it is quite obvious," I tell him. I open my mouth to say some more, but he stands back up.

"I'm just going to go out and get some supplies to stitch you back up, but until then ..." he pauses for a moment as he moves into the kitchen for the first aid kit and comes back with a bandage to staunch the bleeding, "... you're going to have to hold this on. I won't be long. Sherlock, get her some painkillers. Don't let her fall asleep." John leaves, and I hear dad in the kitchen, knocking boxes of medicine aside to find the painkillers. We seem to be all out.

"Mrs H will have some," I tell him softly, and he nods, sprinting down the stairs. He isn't thinking straight. I'm his weakness. I'm also very tired.

For now, I have to make do with a few bandages which I have to hold while John is out buying the essentials to patch me back up again. I hear dad downstairs as my eyes flutter closed, and my hand falls from my shoulder.


End file.
